Coffee Culture

Rating: 2

We ate lunch here in June 2023.

Halloumi bagel
Spinach and mushroom filo
Lemon syrup cake
Banana smoothie

Coffee Culture seems to exist solely to prove that books shouldn’t be judged by their covers. They have all the trappings of a nice cafe, bustling central city location, chic decor, a line of busy people collecting coffees, and a nice looking cabinet. But all of this was just fluff to distract you from what they really have going on, which isn’t much. We weren’t surprised to learn later that Coffee Culture is just another big cafe chain.

We’re often baffled by cafes that get simple things wrong, simple things that are easy to fix, and the halloumi bagel was an excellent example of this phenomenon. The halloumi was barely cooked and was still very firm, and instead of being a fun and squeaky centrepiece it was rubbery and bland. It’s like they have never tried their own bagel, or maybe they just hate food, take your pick. It would have cost them basically nothing to fix this one thing and elevate their bagel significantly. It just makes you think that they don’t care.

And another thing that just reeks of “we don’t care” is the tomato relish with the filo. Do they just put a little bowl of the same relish with everything that comes out of the cabinet? There were some sausage rolls in there that probably would have enjoyed some tomato relish on the side, but it was just the wrong flavour to have with the spinach and mushroom filo. The filo was also over-cheesed but was otherwise okay.

The lemon syrup cake was disappointingly dry, relying entirely on its top blob of syrup for moisture instead of running the syrup through the cake like they should. The banana smoothie also failed to live up to its potential and was unfortunately bland and took far too long to arrive to boot.